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Sideload Synology DS-Video App on to Amazon Fire TV Stick

UPDATE: 25th February 2019 Despite the DS-Video app now being available in the Amazon Fire TV App store, I have updated this because it seems that the Fire TV version of the apps has problems with SSL certificates (even ones issued by a 3rd party certificate authority). There’s been a few changes to the locations of downloads, an additional prompt on the Fire TV stick when connecting via ADB and many newer versions of the APKs!

UPDATE 5th Aug 2017 Thanks to Benil for the info about a new Synology DS-Video App specifically designed for TVs, info below updated. Note if updating to the new Android TV App, you’ll need to remove *ALL* DS-Video app versions from your Fire Stick as they cannot co-exist.

I recently purchased one the newer generation Amazon Fire TV Sticks (with Alexa voice control). I was very much in two minds as to whether or not to buy the older one as I knew that one could have apps sideloaded.

Fortunately it turns out the newer one can too! Immediately this meant I could install two key apps: the Synology DS-Video app (to browse movies stored on my Synology NAS) and the Synology DS-Cam app (to watch the feeds from my security cameras just – well – because).

The steps below explain how to sideload an app using the DS-Video app as an example.

VLC Media Player APK

The original DS-Video app is unable play video files itself and so VLC Media Player needs to be installed to actually play selected videos for that *but* the newer Android TV DS-Video app seems to have a player built in that worked fine for me. If you have any problems however, use VLC.

Update: You can now download VLC from the Fire Stick app store with no problems

Connect to the Amazon Fire Stick

Unzip the Android SDK Tool kit to a folder on your computer, I highly recommend putting it in a folder in the root of your C: drive to make it easy to reference in command prompt, for example c:\androidsdk

Open a Command Prompt with Admin privileges

Browse to the folder you unzipped using the following command:

cd \androidsdk

Enter the command:

adb connect 192.168.1.123

Where 192.168.1.123 is the IP address of your Fire TV Stick as identified earlier.

Update: Amazon have added a security feature at this point, you will see a prompt appear on your TV via the Fire TV stick asking you to confirm you want it to accept the connection. It should be similar to below:

Click OK to confirm

You can now verify you are connected to the Amazon TV Fire Stick by running the following command:

adb devices

You should see your device listed like this:

192.168.1.123:5555 device

To install an APK, ensure its copied to an easy to access path on your machine (I put them in the same folder as the Android Debugger Tools) and install them using the following command (changing the filename to match the APK you wish to install):

adb install AndroidTV-DSvideo.1.1.4-10049.apk

You should see a Success update.

Setting up the DS-VIdeo or DS-Cam App

You may have trouble finding the app when you first install it, sometimes I have to launch it via ‘Managed Installed Apps’ found under Settings > Applications > Manage Install Applications – select the App then press Launch.

The next problem you may encounter is that the application layout is completely stretched and messed up. For some reason this occurs when you first run a Synology Android app on a Fire TV that was made for generic Android. If you press the home button and open the app again, the layout should be fixed.

Finally, entering your information can be frustrating on a non TV version of the app – just remember that the application doesn’t always show a visible cursor when moving through the options and also that sometimes you need to use left and right (as well as up and down) to move across to things like the checkboxes on the other side of the app.

Definitely try some of the previous versions of the app. I had an issue with the DS-CAM app where I could not select the ‘Login’ button to click it no matter what I did. I switched to the second newest version and problem solved.

I believe the apps are HTML based and use responsive CSS for layout to adapt to screens as best they can but obviously TVs via a Fire Stick are a bit of an outlier for them!

One issue is that the latest version of the fire TV stick doesn’t display the IP address in the network settings. The only way I could find out was to log on to my router and look at the client list for the entry. On mine it said amazon_ followed by an alphanumeric id.

Bob – thank you for the details about the Android TV version. I also just purchased a Fire Stick v2 and it works perfectly – EXCEPT that I can’t get it to appear in the “Your Apps & Games” section or in recent. If I pull it up through settings / applications / manage installed applications, i can run it… but terribly inconvenient. Any ideas? Thank you again!

Bob, I followed your procedure exactly and got a success on the Android-DSvideo.3.3.3230-247.apk, but it bricked my Firestick. It boots but the remote no longer works. Would you have a procedure for getting it back to a state (like an uninstall) where it will work?

Hi Toby, The remote is highly unlikely to be affected by any apk install as it interacts with the OS directly. The firestick remotes are known for being flaky though so I’d reboot and pull the batteries from the remote for a while.

I’ll take a look for you when I’m back home but what I do remember is that it was tricky – moving up and down on the Amazon stick isn’t enough because there are links and options on the left and right, some of which don’t highlight when you’re on them. If you managed to enter your username, password and select the Stay Logged In box though, I seem to remember the login button being the easier bit.